Executive brief
NGINX Gateway Fabric is a control plane component that manages NGINX Plus instances. An authenticated attacker with resource creation permissions can inject arbitrary NGINX configuration directives by crafting malicious values in authentication filter settings, potentially allowing unauthorized configuration changes and control plane compromise.
Technical details
A configuration injection vulnerability exists in NGINX Gateway Fabric's NGINX configuration generator component. User-supplied string values from Authentication Filter Custom Resource Definition fields (clientID, cookieName) and the clientSecret field from referenced Secrets are rendered directly into NGINX configuration templates without sanitization or escaping. An authenticated attacker with permission to create or modify these resources can craft values containing NGINX configuration directives that will be injected into the resulting configuration. This is a control plane issue with no direct data plane exposure; exploitation requires authentication and appropriate RBAC permissions.
Affected products
- NGINX Gateway Fabric <UNKNOWN>
Timeline
- 2026-09-02: disclosed